‘It didn’t start out at a transfer station where it was compacted and baled,’ Kitchen said. ‘It started in a Dumpster that was emptied by the packer.’
‘And the packer doesn’t pack?’ Ring dramatically asked. ‘Thought that’s why they were called packers.’ He shrugged and grinned at me.
‘It depends on where the body was in relation to the other garbage when the compacting was done,’ I said. ‘It depends on a lot of things.’
‘Or if it was compacted at all, depending on how full the truck was,’ Kitchen said. ‘I’m thinking it was the packer. Or at most, one of the two trucks before it, if we’re talking about the exact coordinates where the body was found.’
‘I guess I’m going to need the names of those trucks and where they’re from,’ Ring said. ‘We gotta interview the drivers.’
‘So you’re looking at the drivers as suspects,’ Grigg said, coolly, to him. ‘Got to give you credit, that’s original. The way I look at it, the trash didn’t originate with them. It originated with the folks who pitched it. And I expect one of those folks is who we need to find.’
Ring stared at him, not the least bit perturbed. ‘I’d just like to hear what the drivers have to say. You never know. It’d be a good way to stage something. You dump a body in a place that’s on your route and make sure you deliver it yourself. Or, hell, you load it into your own truck. No one suspects you, right?’
Grigg pushed back his chair. He loosened his collar and worked his jaw as if it hurt. His neck popped, then his knuckles. Finally, he slapped his notebook down on the table and everybody looked at him as he glared at Ring.
‘You mind if I work this thing?’ he said to the young investigator. ‘I’d sure hate not to do what the county hired me for. And I believe this is my case, not yours.’
‘Just here to help,’ Ring said easily as he shrugged again.
‘I didn’t know I needed help,’ Grigg replied.
‘The state police formed the multijurisdictional task force on homicides when the second torso showed up in a different county than the first one,’ Ring said. ‘You’re a little late in the game, good buddy. Seems like you might want some background from somebody who’s not.’
But Grigg had tuned him out, and he said to Kitchen, ‘I’d like that vehicle information, too.’
‘How about I get it for the last five trucks that were up there, to be safe,’ Kitchen said to all of us.
‘That will help a lot,’ I said as I got up from the table. ‘The sooner you could do that, the better.’
‘What time you going to work on it tomorrow?’ Ring asked me, remaining in his chair, as if there were little to do in life and so much time.
‘Are you referring to the autopsy?’ I asked.
‘You bet.’
‘I may not even open this one up for several days.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The most important part is the external examination. I will spend a very long time on that.’ I could see his interest fade. ‘I’ll need to go through trash, search for trace, degrease and deflesh bones, get with an entomologist on the age of the maggots to see if I can get an idea of when the body was dumped, et cetera.’
‘Maybe it’s better if you just let me know what you find,’ he decided.
Grigg followed me out the door and was shaking his head as he said in his slow, quiet way, ‘When I got out of the army a long time ago, state police was what I wanted to be. I can’t believe they got a bozo like that.’
‘Fortunately, they’re not all like him,’ I said.
We walked out into the sun as the ambulance slowly made its way down the landfill in clouds of dust. Trucks were chugging in line and getting washed, as another layer of shredded modern America was added to the mountain. It was dark out when we reached our cars. Grigg paused by mine, looking it over.
‘I wondered whose this was,’ he said with admiration. ‘One of these days I’m going to drive something like that. Just once.’